Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr Read Free Book Online Page A

there's no ticket. She's looked."
    Rebecca used to say that Gyula spoke better English than any American and that the whole search for the right word was an act. Maybe. But it's one I've always liked.
    "I'll pick it up," Clare says. "But they'll ask after her, I know it."
    "Clare's plan is to change all her places," Gyula says. "Cleaners, stores, restaurants."
    He says it kindly and he clearly admires her for this ability to protect herself, but it's equally clear my sister wishes he had not chosen to share her plan with all of us.
    "I'll go," Raphael says. "Dry cleaners don't need a slip, just the phone number."
    "You will?" Clare asks. "Really?"
    "I know where it is."
    I'm watching Gyula, as he's endlessly handsome and I've spent five years staring at him while wishing I could stop. Right now, as I watch him look at the other two, I think that if this were a play and I were building the set, I would start with Gyula. I would take his silence here and move out from it, as Janie recommended.
    This is a really bad habit of mine. When I am nervous or not quite sure of what I'm doing, I turn life into a play. I try to imagine the people around me with stage directions and the set they might need. It does calm me down and help me think. But it also makes me feel a little freakish.
    I put on the bracelet, which is a wide and heavy gold band with emeralds on either side. I've never seen it before.
    "It's more valuable than attractive," Da says to me before turning to Clare, something else in his hand. "I want to give this to Leila. She's sixteen, just like Rebecca was."
    It's the ring his mother gave him before he got married. I know the story behind this, at least. It was for Julian to give to Janie, but she never wore it and so he decided, when Rebecca was born, that she should get it for her sixteenth birthday.
    "Yes," Clare says. "Of course."
    "I think you should have it," I say. "You were sixteen before me."
    The ring is slender and gold. It holds three small diamonds in separate settings and looks, for all the world, like an engagement ring.
    "No," Clare says. "I'm pretty sure she'd want you to have it."
    Which is how my father comes to give this ring, for the second time, to his sixteen-year-old daughter. I know I will wind up keeping it on a ribbon hanging in my closet. I'd wear it if it had come from Rebecca. But almost better than that, better than even wearing it, is Clare's belief that it should be mine. I now own something that has traveled from the Alexandrian Abranels through the Julian and Janie Abranels. To me. The Leila kind.

Seven
    M Y PARENTS LEAVE A WEEK LATER but I manage to get homesick
before
they go. I haven't even moved to Clare's yet, but the cold, hollow place in my chest that I remember from summer camp roars into place. It's the cat's fault.
    The cat—skinny, with gray stripes and named My Scott—was a gift last year from Rebecca. My Scott had been hers—he was a gift from a friend when she and William divorced. She had him for three years, but Clare's allergic and Janie's rent-controlled apartment is in a building that doesn't allow them. So I kind of inherited him when the girls moved in together. I'm not really a cat person so much, but I respect the way he ignores me unless I'm busy. I also like how he falls asleep on places most likely to resent having cat hair all over them.
    Ben's taking him. Mrs. Greene, who mostly thinks I'm a bad influence on her sainted son, was great about allowing it. Ben says his mother is totally spooked about Rebecca's death and keeps saying,
Oh, that poor man. That poor family.
She's taking my cat, so it's kind of hard to resent her pity.
    I leave My Scott at Ben's along with the carrier, toys, a stash of catnip, and a long list of instructions.
    "Oh, my God," Ben says. "Are you kidding me?"
    "He was Rebecca's," I say in what I hope will be a voice stern enough to keep my real thoughts—
I'm going to miss my parents
—hidden and quiet.
    "He's not going to die on